"God's given
me a gift. I shovel well...I shovel very well."The Shoveler: Mystery Men

Back in the '80s, a comic book scripter named Alan Moore and a comic
book artist named Dave Gibbons got together to concoct a massive,
multi-issue Graphic Novel called The Watchmen.
The result was a mammoth achievement, taking the comic world by storm,
through its mind-blowing complexity in word and picture, and its fresh
take on the entire superhero genre itself. (No doubt you already know
all this, but allow me a little backstory for THOSE WHO CAME IN LATE...)

The Watchmen was set in an
imaginary alternative Now, and involved the creation of a whole crop of
original supertypes, which were nonetheless obviously based on
pre-existing archetypes. For example, instead of Batman we have
"Night Owl", who has no special powers but a whole lot of gadgets;
instead of Superman we have "Dr. Manhattan". whose powers are virtually
without limit. To this day, two decades on, most comic book fans
will tell you without hesitation that The Watchmen
was THE pinnacle of superhero comic book creation. Only Frank
Miller's Batman serial, The Dark
Knight Returns, comes close to sharing The Watchmen's lofty perch, and even
then most fans would rank it a close second -- (although I'm not one of
them...I consider Miller's Dark
Knight Returns the ne plus
ultra of comicdom...a topic which I hope to one day
revisit.). The Watchmen
truly made comic book
history.

There were various reasons for this. Partly it was the sheer
complexity of the thing the blew everyone away. It proved,
according to the fans, that comics didn't have to be kid's stuff.
They could tell disturbing, intelligent, ADULT stories, instead of just
showing a bunch of guys in tights pummelling each other.
(Although there was plenty of pummelling in The Watchmen, make no mistake.)
But Moore and Gibbons had an agenda too. They both felt that
superhero comics were childish and unrealistic. They wanted to
expose the weaknesses in the superhero genre by creating their own
superheros and asking what sort of a person would really want to dress up in a mask
and cape and roam the night beating up thugs. Instead of the
standard unblemished superheroes fighting crime for the sake of
fighting
crime, Moore and Gibbons presented complex characters, driven by
neuroses with definite feet of clay. It wasn't a pretty picture
but, according to the fans, it was realistic.

Make no mistake, Moore and Gibbons had very lofty plans for their The Watchmen. As Moore repeatedly
explained in later years, he thought at the time that his The Watchmen would so thoroughly
undermine the superhero genre that the genre itself would have no
choice but to call it quits. I kid you not. After The Watchmen, he fully expected comics
companies Marvel and DC would have to retool their comics lines,
eliminating all their superheroes -- after The Watchmen had exposed the
ludicrousness behind the genre, how could it continue? And Moore,
for all his hubris, wasn't alone in hearing in The Watchmen the deathknell of the
superheroes. In fact, recently visiting a website
ranking the top Graphic Novels in comic history, I found The Watchmen not surprisingly made the
list and the judge commented: "God alone knows how mainstream
super-heroes carried on after [The Watchmen]."

Instead of spelling the end of the superheroes, The Watchmen influenced the genre the
last way Moore and Gibbons would have wished. Superheroes
continued, but now their stories followed a darker, more violent
path. Whereas The Watchmen
was meant to show seriously flawed antiheroes, exposing the lie behind
the squeaky clean myth, later writers took the message that superheroes
were cooler the more messed up they were. Now antiheroes became
the rage, the more violent the better. Recently, comics have
begun to reemerge from this violent dark age, but, for a time, things
looked pretty bleak.

But my point in detailing the history of The Watchmen is this. I find it
truly amazing that anyone could have thought that The Watchmen (or any single comic)
would spell the end of superheroes. Superheroes have existed ever
since Superman first lifted a car in Action
Comics #1 way back in 1938. In the decades since,
superheroes have multiplied like tribbles, weaving themselves
inextricably into the fabric of our pop culture. A phenomenon
like
that doesn't just close up shop because of one criticism, no matter how
cogent.

More important -- and apropos
to the topic of this essay -- there is a hidden assumption behind the
notion that The Watchmen might
have spelled the end of superheroes. This is the assumption that
an Art form like superhero comics can only exist so long as it is
continuing to evolve, continuing to push the envelope, to innovate. The Watchmen, it was believed, in
exposing the "lie" behind the squeaky clean superhero myth,
essentionally said all there was left to say. And, with nothing
more to be said, the superhero genre had nowhere left to go. It
was over and done with. As Stan the Man would have said: "Nuff
said."

But is this necessarily right? Is that the sole measure of the
superhero genre? Either it must push the envelope or die?
Must it always be forging into new unexplored territory?
Certainly, if we see comics as Art, we are inclined to this
viewpoint. But must comics be seen as Art? Is there some
other way of looking at things?

I think it is just as valid to think of superhero comics as a Craft,
rather than as Art. And considered in that light, success is not
measured by innovation but by "craftmanship".

Consider, as an example, a chairmaker. I think we can agree
that chairmaking is more a Craft than an Art. With such a Craft, the
craftsman's goal is not to find a new way to make chairs. It is
to
make chairs which are hopefully as good as the best which were made by
the craftsmen before him. No one criticized Stradivarius because
his violins didn't explore new forms. He made violins and he made
them exceptionally well. His goal was to make them the best
violins they could be -- not to invent a different instrument nor to
take violins in a new direction.

This notion of seeing Art as Craft can just as easily be applied to
the genre most dear to all our hearts -- Pulp fiction. Pulp
fiction was (and is) frequently criticized for
lack of innovation. It's practitioners were damned as "hacks",
mindlessly churning out stagnant imitations of those who had come
before them, showing no imagination of their own. And I would
certainly not dispute this. The pulpsters did indeed steal
heavily from each other. But this is only a fault if we insist on
seeing Pulp as an Art form. Viewed as a Craft, akin to
chairmaking or violin making, it has nothing to apologize for.

Nor am I suggesting that either superhero comics or Pulp Fiction
should somehow be exempt from criticism. Is there such a thing as
a poorly made chair? Of course there is. As I said, the
measure of success, where a Craft is concerned, is how well does the
product compare with the best which have gone before? Lord knows,
there were plenty of bad stories produced during the Pulp Fiction
era. There were plenty of bad superhero comics put out before and
after The Watchmen. But
there were also other examples in both Crafts which, because they were
not striving to push the envelope and explore new territory, are too
casually dismissed. In truth, their purpose was to show the same
craftmanship as the best which had gone before, and thus that should be
the true measure of their success.

Perhaps, more importantly, seeing an Art form as a Craft leads to
another happy difference. Because Art forms are often expected to
be forever "improving" upon the past, they carry with them an inherent
disdain for that past. Sure, there are the
occasional exceptions, like Shakespeare or Da Vinci, who are almost
universally admired, but generally the
tendency is to say: "Oh, they did all right for their time. But we've
learned so much more since
then, donchathink?"

Craftsmen, on the other hand, see the world differently. They
revere the past. They learn from it and recognize that they
should consider themselves damned lucky if they can even approach the
level of craftsmanship achieved by past masters.

In no way am I saying that the superhero genre should
stagnate. Nor am I saying that there haven't been innovators in
the genre of Pulp fiction. I am just as thrilled as the next
reader when I run across something done in a way I've never seen
before. But I also recognize that sometimes equalling the past
can be just as difficult as "improving on it". An army of
lacklustre Conan imitations and pastiches churned out over the last few
decades surely proves that point clearly
enough. I think it is fair to say no modern imitator has ever
equalled the story telling abilities of Conan's creator Robert E.
Howard. But, if
they did, would we criticize them for failing to take the archetype of
the barbarian hero in "new directions"? Or would we applaud them
for showing excellent craftsmanship?

Good craftsmanship is just as difficult as innovation. Or to refer to the quote from the movie Mystery Men with which I began this essay -- Why can't it be enough to shovel very well?

If
Conan is a chair, right now I'd settle for a well-crafted footstool.